IN OTHER WORDS
New York, May 2025
When director DANIEL MINAHAN set out to bring Shannon Pufahl’s novel On Swift Horses to the screen, it was never about a faithful adaptation. It was a dialogue. What unfolds in the film isn’t a mimicry or replacement of the book, but an interpretation, Minahan’s own narrative voice in conversation with Pufahl’s.
Set in the charged, post–Korean War 1950s, the story follows newlywed Muriel as she begins a quietly radical transformation, spurred by her growing fascination with her mysterious brother-in-law, Julius. Through gambling halls, queer longing, hidden money, and letters sent across distance and desire, On Swift Horses becomes a meditation on secrecy and connection.
To celebrate the digital and theatrical release of the project born of their creative marriage, the two titans reflect on the process: from the two different endings to the challenges in reframing the novel’s emotional quietness into its cinematic language.
Robe Halston
DANIEL MINAHAN: Hi Shannon, how are you? Are you on your sabbatical?
SHANNON PUFAHL: I’m still going to class, but then I have summer off, so I’m looking forward to that.
DM: I wish I could be in your class.
SP: I wish you could be too, you have some things to teach these young people. It would be great to have you across the table and know that someone understands what I’m saying.
Shirt and scarf Tom Ford, pants Daniel’s own
DM: I’m trying to remember when we first met. I have a feeling it was on Zoom.
SP: I think so, during lockdown.
DM: It’s interesting because Peter [Spears] and I both received your novel at the same time. I received it from my agent. Usually, I hate everything, but he told me that I was going to like this one. It was a challenge. I was a third of the way through when I called Peter. By the time we finished, we were both so excited.
SP: I didn’t know the story of how the book ended up in your hands, or how we ended up talking, until I went to LA and met with the movie agent who had handled everything. She told me how it all went down. There was something so magical about the two of you reading it independently, not knowing at first that the other had it, but both having this real connection to it. When we met, I felt really drawn to both of you and the energy you had together. That was really special. I just felt instantly like everything was going to be fine.
Full look Ferragamo
DM: Reading the book during lockdown, it felt like Muriel and Julius became my friends. I always know when I love something because I take my time with it. And your book is so much about time, this singular kind of stillness. Much of it is memory, much is recounted, but it exists in this magical space. I wanted to ask you, because we’ve never talked about it, but when I read the book, it felt familiar. There was something Baldwin-esque wafting through, a bit of Gore Vidal, and a lot of Patricia Highsmith. I know it’s not an homage, but were you drawing on queer literature intentionally? Or is that just in the DNA?
SP: Some of it is just what I absorbed over a lifetime. I grew up in Kansas, and was a queer adolescent in the early ’90s. That was not an amazing time or place to be queer. I knew that about myself early, and the only link I had was reading, books, the library. So those stories were formative, that orientation to the world. But really, I set out to write a Western. I was more interested in revising that American genre. The noir elements and the Highsmith came through more because of the setting. Like, it’s hard to avoid when you’re in a 1950s gambling den or racetrack, the way people talk, gamblers especially.
Full look Tom Ford
DM: When we were prepping the film, I’d spend every weekend at the track, just absorbing that world. Funny thing is, when we shot the film, Luc Montpelier and I decided not to watch any movies. There’s already so much genre implied in the novel and screenplay, we didn’t want to reference anything directly. Instead, we looked at documentary photography from the era. Bruce Davidson, for example, his photos of young people in the ’50s and early ’60s. And also, Vivian Maier, we looked at her work a lot. And, oh my God, I’m blanking on his name, the famous street/journalistic photographer who was also a filmmaker… They say your ability to remember names drops after 40... Apparently true! But even though we weren't referencing specific films, the archetypes crept in. When we shot the opening scene, when Muriel meets Julius, she’s in the window looking down, he’s shirtless, I was like, “Oh my God, this is the beginning of Picnic.”
Daisy Edgar-Jones had the novel with her the whole time. Dog-eared, full of post-its, notes. She was charting her own performance using the novel as much as the script. Actors often ask you for backstory, but in this case, it was all in the book. So rich. There’s only so much real estate in a 90-minute film, and the novel filled in the gaps.
SP: I can see that. The first time I saw the film, what amazed me most was Daisy’s embodiment of Muriel. Someone asked if the cast was what I imagined. I said, “I didn’t imagine a cast.” You can’t. You have to imagine them as real people. She’s more beautiful than I imagined Muriel to be, but she disappears into the role. Even I, who created Muriel, started thinking of her as that person. It’s such an amazing performance. She can be plain or luminous. She uses her body, the camera, so masterfully. I’ve always seen Muriel as invisible, an observer. Julius too, watching from the catwalk, hiding in the hotel.
DM: The novel is so interior. So delicate. What Bryce [Kass] and I had to do was give that interiority a voice, like the story about Muriel’s mom driving 100 miles to wear pants to church. Or the scenes with Sandra, those are when we learn about Muriel. In ADR, Muriel had the fewest lines. She’s mostly listening. That was what struck me about Daisy since Normal People, the ability to portray someone with a rich inner life, even if they aren’t the most sympathetic at first. I was curious how you felt about Lee, since we brought him forward a lot more in the film.
Shirt and scarf Tom Ford, pants Daniel’s own
SP: In the novel, it’s third-person limited. He’s the Venn diagram centre. You find out about him through others, but he has no interiority. That nursery scene, that monologue about Julius’s feelings toward that couple. It was so evocative. He really emerged for me at that moment. So much pathos, his ability to forgive. She does questionable things, but we sympathise, because Lee does. He becomes our focal point. Will’s [Poulter] performance is so understated. It reminded me of the young actor in May December, the second act revelation. Will had that same presence. Holding the triad together, a bit of a cypher, then he shines in the third act.
DM: He knew what was going on the whole time. That scene where Lee says to Julius, “I wanted you to see what it would be like to grow up here,” and Julius says, “I’m not like you,” and Lee responds, “I know who you are.” It’s acceptance, but Julius can’t take it in. I said to Jacob [Elordi] when we shot it, “The only thing worse than hiding from your family is being accepted by them.” Because then you have to face yourself. Bringing Lee forward was important. We needed an antagonist, but he’s the most generous antagonist. Upright, forgiving. What I love about your novel, besides what I recognised in myself, is the way these queer people just get on with their lives. It reminded me of people I grew up around, friends of my parents. It didn’t have to be a victim story. That ending, where Julius goes to find Henry, it’s hopeful. Did you set out to do that? Within the canon of literature in the 1950s, that’s radical.
Left Turtleneck Tom Ford
Right Coat Halston, pants Tom Ford
SP: I was really interested in queer people before the politics of sexuality fully emerged. In the ‘70s and after, those liberation movements were crucial, but they also focused on a specific kind of grievance. It’s not that queer people in the '50s didn’t feel grievance or trauma, they absolutely did, but there was also this sense of “getting on with it.” There was seeking, there was movement. That felt important. To bring it back to Lee, he’s an antagonist because he represents a constrictive, normative way of dreaming. One of my favourite additions in the screenplay that’s not in the novel is when Muriel writes to him at the end and says, “Your dream is a good dream.” I love that line so much. I wish I had written it, it’s what I wanted to say, but I hadn’t found the words for it. Because it is a good dream, it’s just not a dream that includes these two particular people or what they represent, historically. Lee is antagonistic because his dream is too small, not because he’s trying to hurt anyone. That was important, to write a character who represents cultural pressure not through malice but through a lack of imagination. I’m curious, your ending is a little different from mine. What were some of your choices there? How did you approach translating that ending into this version of the story?
DM: Yeah. Well, for one, I’m in love with the scene where Julius comes to the bedroom and kisses her. It’s such a literary conceit. It’s written so beautifully, and then all the money she’d hidden is gone. But we found it difficult to reconcile that for the screen, for Muriel to forgive him, for us to care about Julius after that. That money was her freedom. So, we made a choice that reflected that. Having her return to Kansas, that’s not in the book. In the novel, she goes to the housing development, Sandra’s house is gone; she finds a little bit of money there. But we never hear from Muriel again. It felt important to me that we see her again. She has a moment of resolution. The first thing she says to Sandra when they meet is, “Wow, so you live here on your own.” Seeing a woman living without a man is such a revelation to her. So, ending with Muriel in that space, standing on her front porch, smoking a cigarette, felt right.
SP: Yeah, it’s a little Wizard of Oz, right?
DM: Exactly. Back in Kansas, finding strength right there in her own backyard. It’s funny, the reaction has been interesting. Women get it. They see she never sold the house, and that Julius is going back to find Henry. But straight guys? Almost all think he’s going to find her. They see him riding the horse and assume it’s a reunion.
Left Turtleneck Tom Ford
Right Pants Tom Ford, top and scarf Pierre Cardin
SP: That horse isn’t making it to Kansas… [Laughs]
DM: Right! He’s just walking it. I grew up riding, you can’t ride a horse across states, especially on asphalt. We had to put rubber shoes on it. We shot so many of them just walking together, him whistling, talking to the horse… It’s this archetypal image. The novel ends with him riding into the sunrise. It’s so beautiful. We kept that tone. But we had to lose one of my favourite images: the horse walking into the house. It was magical realism, and while it was stunning, it threw off the tone; it made the last 20 minutes feel like a fever dream. So, we cut it.
SP: That’s a huge act of translation, bringing something internal into a visual medium. What did you find most difficult or interesting about adapting it?
DM: Two things. First, people really want to track the money. For us, gambling became a code for queerness. It’s secret, it’s covert. Not necessarily today, but in this world. It’s about watching, intimacy, and coded language. Second, the love between Muriel and Julius. That bond struck me immediately. It’s romantic, but it transcends description, intention, even sexuality. It reminded me of the kinds of intense alliances between lesbians and gay men during the ACT UP days, like family. That’s what I wanted to capture.
Two people who will never be together in a conventional way, but who irrevocably change each other. The hardest part? Showing how they influence each other while apart. We had some letters in the novel, I added a bit more, and we used phone calls. I needed to know they were thinking of each other. That’s such a great way to show it. And it felt organic, especially with your amazing invention, the dead letter board, which is the thing everyone talks about when they leave the theatre. People ask, “Did that exist?” There were bulletin boards, sure, but that particular idea was Shannon’s. I was thinking about Haight-Ashbury in the late ‘60s. Or after 9/11, people put up pictures, “Have you seen…” That emotional yearning. Muriel and Julius writing to each other paid off so beautifully with that.
Conversation conducted by Pedro Vasconcelos
Photography by David Macke
Fashion by Victoria Bartlett
Grooming by Regina Harris